


Diary of a Raging Trashfire Masquerading as a functioning adult

by SoupShue



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-27 15:07:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30124656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SoupShue/pseuds/SoupShue
Summary: When people think you're an adult...but really
Kudos: 1





	1. Chapter 1

So, Ostensibly, biologically, chronologically, socially, by all markers of society in probably more cultures than just my own, I'm an adult. Supposedly. I can drive a car, be in public places by myself without a chaperone, order and drink alcohol without anybody raising eyebrows, buy things without asking for permission from an adultier adult, pay taxes, get married. The List goes on. I am not even a YOUNG ADULT any longer, I am past entry bearing age for children- if you ask my family and that random lady who hit me with her Gucci bag in public last week and then exclaimed incorrectly "woah! When are you due?!" I'm supposed to have already borne children and it's a shame I don't have a life partner..... I'm even into the age range where most of my generational peers have houses and children and mortgages and spouses and have their financial shit together and are working on finishing paying off college debt.

Much to my family's chagrin, my younger sibling has followed the white picket fence path into adulthood with swan-like ease, and I say swan-like because on the surface of it all it is graceful and poised and beautiful and serene. And I know that under the surface of that they are paddling furiously and churning the water with a frothing intensity to stay afloat. I know that's everybody. But if they are the swan, well, I'm the half-molted confused duckling that imprinted on the swan and is bobbling around behind them in a weird wobbly meandering circular path with fluff sticking out the side of my face and my wings all akimbo because I don't know where to put them. 

This is the series where I'll tell the stories of life from my perspective, some people who've already heard them think they're funny. 


	2. Are you Gay?

I am bad a social cues. 

No, Really. 

Like, really, really bad at social cues. 

I have trouble figuring out when to stop talking, when to START talking, when to just shut myself down and walk away. I have trouble figuring out if people are talking to me or if they aren't. Sometimes I join a conversation I'm not even welcome in without realizing it... I can't get the eye contact thing down. When am I staring? When am I being rude by not looking at someone? What tone of voice am I using? Am I interrupting someone? Talking too loud, too soft, too slow, too fast? I need a social translator. When I get stressed out in social situations, I look pissed off or weirdly over happy, I find a corner to hide in, or glom on to the people in the room who make me the least nervous and won't let go, even if they're trying to get rid of me. I will find the pets and make friends. Non-human social language is easy to identify, people are hecking complicated. I need a social translator. I actually had a social translator in high school, my best friend could interpret what was going on inside my head in a crowd of people just by looking at my variously hyper-mobile or stone like expressions and crack the code of what was happening.

In short, if you asked me to read a room? The room is written in embossed, desaturated hieroglyphics underscored in braille and Mandarin. And I only know garden-variety English.

I cannot read the room.

But reading the room is something nebulous and misty that gets taught without a lesson plan, it's something you're just supposed to casually absorb like a dry sponge on a wet counter..... Reading the room is somehow something you're just supposed to KNOW. 

I cannot read the room, but everyone around me thinks that I can. Because I look like a "normal, functioning adult" whatever that's even supposed to mean. It very much confuses the "normal people" around me who haven't bothered to get to know me who are throwing signals out left and right that are clear as day and loud fireworks displays to everyone else, and they sail right over my head without landing in any kind of territory I understand. Everyone else is seeing fireworks, and I'm over there in the corner watching the stars under the tree not even paying attention. 

Which brings me to college. 

In college I kept my head down and studied and asked the teachers complicated questions and went to discussion groups. I am a card carrying nerdy person. Books make more sense than people do. There is certainly a WEALTH of potentially socially damaging subtext in the literary world, words have power and have been used to protest powers, topple governments, subvert societal norms, and send secret messages since written word was invented. 

However there is little in the way of literature that has the potential to damage MY social standing in the here and now.in current society, books are a haven, the written word a sanctuary I can dive into without having to worry what others will think of me. Books have been my friends since I learned to read, and I read like I breathe. In written words, black and white, the set and type and time of something sitting on a page or a screen, I do not have to guess at what is being said. If I am confused I can read a line, a word, a paragraph a scene as many times as I need to and nobody will get offended or call me weird or think that I am being rude for rudeness's sake. 

Anyway, I was in college. 

There were a few individuals who shared a few classes with me that had more than one conversation with me outside of the lecture hall, I was experiencing an engaging dialogue about something the professor had gone over in class when, to me, seemingly out of the blue, the person looked me in the eye and very bluntly asked-

"Are you GAY?!?" 

Because I have no social skills and cannot pick up on conversational fireworks, I calmly replied

"NO" 

And kept talking about the lecture series the professor was doing that week.

To which the individual I was speaking to said

"You're definitely gay, wanna bring your partner round and have a threesome?" 

I said "No, I'm not gay, I'm not dating, and that does not sound like a good time." and I walked away.

That individual never spoke to me again.

It came to my attention later through the gossip of about five other mutual classmates that what I thought were engaging conversations about the lecture material were actually apparently very obvious and blatant attempts at flirting. That this individual was one in a line of people who had seen it as a challenge to flirt with me and see if I would respond. That there had been rumors going on for a while about my preferences and desires. 

Apparently I had been throwing mixed signals for months and nobody could figure me out. People thought I'd been flirting with guys, gals, and all the pals, but I never caught on when anyone was flirting back, and I DIDN"T EVEN KNOW I WAS FLIRTING in the first place.

I don't respond well to subtle means. I have all the conversational subtlety of a poorly maintained jack-hammer unless I'm in a familiar situation with a role and parameters I can operate in. Even with conversational rules and guidelines and familiar territory I can still be a little much for some people. 

People in college thought I was a gay, married, square. 

People in college also called me a robot. 

People in college called me frigid and rude. 

Nobody ever came up to me and asked me the right questions in the right way. I don't have a verbal filter, all their questions would have been answered if they had bothered to try.

I guess that means that something is wrong with me, I never did get invited to any wild parties, but honestly I preferred it that way anyway. It meant I had more time for books, and books never assumed I was flirting with them. So that's a plus. 


End file.
